As I remember her, Mrs. Mary Duncan was a small woman, made smaller by rheumatoid arthritis, her limbs drawn into tortured angles and her hands so gnarled that her fingers curled over each other. She had been an English teacher at the high school, but in the days before biologics, it didn’t take the arthritis long to end that.

When I was in elementary school we lived two doors down from her and Dr. Duncan. Parenthetically, Dr. Duncan was the doctor who would have delivered me if he had gotten out of bed fast enough in the middle of that cold January night. By the time he got there, grandmother had done the honors; so he had a cup of coffee and went back home. Twenty-one years later, Dr. Peggy Duncan, Dr. Duncan’s daughter in law, got up in time to deliver our son.

I’ve been thinking a lot about Mrs. Duncan lately.

Mrs. Duncan had a thing she did for the more bookish kids in the neighborhood. We would read a book and go to her house and do a book report. She would listen to the book report and when we were finished, she would give us a little gift—perhaps a candy bar. And sometimes she would suggest another book.

It didn’t seem like school, and it didn’t seem like work. I looked forward to visiting her and telling her about the book I had just read. It wasn’t until after I was grown that it finally occurred to me that, considering her condition, it was an unusual thing for her to do. It would have been easier just to sit there and listen to the radio. I doubt she could have held a book.

But something, probably the same thing that got her into teaching in the first place, made her want to continue to do something, no matter how small the probability that it would make a great difference. But I’m not sure it didn’t. Perhaps it was because of her interest and candy bars that I began to devour the little town library. And I thought about her off and on for many years because she encouraged something that I’ve loved all of my life.

But it was only after I admitted that I was old and began wondering what I would do with whatever future I had left that I really realized the importance of Mrs. Mary Duncan. For those of us who knew her and were a part of her on-going campaign for reading she has become a symbol that, no matter your circumstance, there is always something left you can do to make the world around you a better place. If Mrs. Duncan, with twisted limbs and nearly constant pain, could find one more thing to do, how cowardly would I have to be to declare myself too old, too tired, and too out of touch to do something.

Thank you, Mrs. Duncan.

The last time I saw Mrs. Duncan she was sitting in Dr. Duncan’s car at the curb by the drug store where I worked. I went out to say hello, and we chatted for a few minutes. I’ve forgotten exactly what we talked about, but I remember how it ended. I said something about my reading Sir Walter Scott. She smiled and said, “Thank you.”

I guess the confusion on my face must have been obvious, because she repeated the “Thank you.” Then she said it was because I had correctly used the possessive pronoun before the gerund. I hope she also felt that it was a little bit of affirmation for her efforts.